


The Servant Problem

by cmshaw



Category: Those Who Hunt the Night - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Aristocracy, Book-level violence, Gen, Vampire Politics, Vampire feeding as sex, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:06:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1643132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmshaw/pseuds/cmshaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is loyalty, or love, or friendship?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Servant Problem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/gifts).



> Written for Truth

_It is worth everything to be with you,_ she had said to her husband, perhaps the truest thing she had said since the triumphant _I knew you could not be dead!_ \-- both statements that were, in retrospect, not as specific as they ought to have been. Still, _everything_ was what she had said and it was, she was sure, what she was prepared to give again, if need be.

He trailed a step or two behind her, distracted with his fretting, as she picked her way through the dirty snow. Mortals might not see the ruin of her shoes while she wore them, but the servants had ways of noticing things after she discarded them. It was that which caused their current trouble, after all, and in addition she was fond of these shoes. In a few turns they would reach the neighborhood they sought, one where a body might be discarded unnoticed.

She turned a corner and stopped. Charles glided to her side. She said, hopefully, "Simon."

"Anthea," he said. A mortal might have smiled; Simon did not, which meant nothing, but she did not see the faint relaxation which might have meant the same from him. "Charles," he said, not looking away from her.

They looked odd, the three of them, standing in this empty road. Past another corner would be rough men in rough coats walking -- not yet staggering -- between houses serving ale and houses serving women, but here there was nothing but mud and unlit windows with tradesmen's dreams leaking out. Anyone walking by would have stopped and stared at them, at her Earl and Don Simon in their handsome frock coats and at her own fashionable Apollo's Knot and décolleté dress with the padded hem dragging lightly at the snow. None of them ought to have been there; Charles, for all of his love of dancing, would never look the part of the drunkard wandering too far afield, and as for Simon, the exquisite stiffness of his posture made him as unlikely a sight here as Anthea herself.

Of course, no one would see Simon any more than they would see her, and both knew these turns better, perhaps, than the sleeping tradesmen around them who had lived here all of their lives. It was for Charles that she had given everything, but, having given it, she had received so much more.

"We thought to discuss it after the hunt," she said.

There was the faint gesture toward a smile in his eyes at that; perhaps he, too, had had a nurse who had told him that a good meal would make everything seem better, and was comparing that to the meal she planned now. "I shall wait," he said, and vanished.

With a flicker of envy for the ease with which he had turned her sight away as simply as a mortal's, Anthea led her husband on. It was the work of a moment to find a bow-legged sailor who would not be missed, but Charles put his hand lightly on her shoulder when she would have drawn her choice to where they waited. "I don't trust him," he said softly, meaning Simon.

She was not entirely sure that Simon was not listening to them even now, but it didn't matter. "His loyalty to _him_ is not as ours," she said. She was also not entirely sure that the Master of London did not listen, and although they also spoke of things known, it would matter to attract _his_ attention.

"I meant, must we deal with him? _He_ might still do it for us," Charles said. He had said this before, but at her look he said it again: " _He_ needs us."

"He needs you," she said.

"And I need you, my darling," he replied. A new sailor turned toward them, away from the lighted windows and his companions, and Anthea did not wait to see what Charles had made him think awaited him in their alley before pulling him roughly back and ripping open his cuff. Charles' hand covered the sailor's mouth as he bit down on the throat \-- she always left him the throat, as a courtesy, when they hunted together -- and her fangs cut the wrist neatly, in spite of her nervous frustration. It would only be more irritation to get blood on her sleeves.

The heat of the blood stunned her, as it always did, and made her remember the second time Charles had kissed her. The first time she had pulled away and, mortifyingly, giggled. The second time, at a party the weekend after the first, she had not. This time, she knew that she touched Charles nowhere with her body, that the only connection between them now was through the veins of this sailor they were killing, but it thrilled her just the same. She opened her eyes and saw, undoubtedly because he wished her to see, Simon standing a few feet away. She had known when they had met that he had already fed that night; occasionally they had hunted together, although never intimately, and she had thought of inviting him tonight as part of her persuasion. Now she let her eyes drift shut as the sailor's death throes began and Simon watched the ecstasy that she and Charles felt between them.

After, she reached out and wiped a spot of blood from Charles' cheek. Other than the body that he now lifted and the warm blush to their faces, it was the only sign of what they had done. Charles looked at Simon for a long moment and then said to her, "Be careful." She could see him walking away with the body, but she could not tell if Simon saw or not, since he kept his gaze politely on her. Charles did not add, _I trust you,_ but he didn't need to.

When he was gone, Simon said, "Grippen is not listening."

"Will you help us?" she said.

He stood calmly for a moment, looking through her, and then said, "Why?"

"Why do we need help?" she asked. "Or why are we asking your help?"

Simon waited.

"All of us made here in London are _his_ get," she said. "It is not right."

"It is the way it always is," Simon told her.

"He permits you to stay," she said.

She had hoped to anger him with the word _permits_ , but she got nothing, not even the flick of a pale eyebrow. He had probably anticipated her. "Yes," he said gravely. They both knew that Grippen would never admit to being threatened by Simon's presence, and they both knew he was.

Reflexively she lowered her voice and thickened the cloud blanketing the minds around them, even though she knew that neither of those things would stop Grippen from hearing his own fledgling if he chose to do so. "My husband is the Earl of Ernchester," she said. "Lionel Grippen is nothing and no one without him, and he parades his fledgling whores before us when Charles only wants one servant. One! Danny has served us all his life."

"And he would serve you all of his undeath," Simon said softly, "no matter who made him."

"Which is why _he_ will not make him." A mortal might have pursed her lips or sighed heavily; Anthea still did, sometimes, for lack of any better expressions, but Simon's utter quiet made her ashamed to do it before him.

"He made you for Charles," Simon said.

Now it was shuddering she missed from her range of natural reactions, as she recalled lying cradled in Grippen's arms, bleeding, lying in Grippen's soul, dead, and lying in Grippen's arms again, knowing that everything was different now, even Charles. "I would rather it were you than _him_ , for Danny," she said. Oddly, it was that which seemed to startle him at last. "You are my friend," she said.

Eventually he said, "You might think differently, had I been the one to make you." There had been an infinitesimal hesitation before the last word that made her wonder if Simon had meant to refer to Charles.

"I doubt it," she said.

"But what you wish is for your servant to be your own fledgling," he said after another pause, during which he had not quite met her eyes.

"Or Charles'," she said.

"My lady," he said, "let us be plain."

Angrily, she said, "I do this for Charles."

"And do you think he would survive for very long, being set up as the new Master of London?" Simon's gaze was mocking.

"He is stronger than you think," she said.

"He is strong because of you," Simon said, "but I have seen vampires like your husband before. Borrowed strength is never enough, in the long run. For what it is worth, I am sorry."

"You will not help us, then?" she said, turning away miserably.

There was silence behind her for so long that she had to look up at last to be sure he was still there. For a moment she could not even see him, and then a lighter patch of moonlight became pale hair and he stood, for a moment, looking suddenly young enough to remind her that when she had died, at age sixty-two, she would have considered him a bare youth. She could not be sure if she saw a sadness in his eyes or if she merely remembered her own at his age. Then he tilted his head up and she remembered that he had been dead before she or Charles had ever lived, and also that she had died happy because it had been worth it, and also that she had not and would never completely die any more than Charles had.

"Go to Grippen," he told her. "He will make Charles a servant to keep him happy." Then he said, "You will need to do more, someday," and was gone, although she stared suspiciously at the shadows until Charles returned.

 _Never enough, in the long run,_ she thought, looking at her husband \-- but surely not. Not Charles, with his love of their undeath together, his fascination with the new inventions of mortals, his intense loyalty to those servants who loved him.... No, surely Simon merely did not understand him as she did.

It occurred to her, as she took Charles' temporarily warm hand in her own and remembered how three evenings ago Danny had come to them -- to both of them -- to say that he knew and that he still loved and served them, that Simon had not said that he would not support _her_ as Master of London.

"Well?" Charles said.

"If we are to go and make request of the Master of London," she said, "we should attire more formally."

Charles squeezed her hand deliberately before releasing it. "I will do it," he said. "You should stay with Danny and see that he is ready." He knew, she thought, that she hated to watch him humble himself before Grippen as she had never hated his bent knee to the court when they had lived. At least Simon respected an Earl's rank, even if he thought the Ernchesters below his Spanish blood...at least Simon, she thought, would not have gathered fledglings of whores and made her husband one of them, another building block for his power. He had the ruthlessness for it, but not the selfish fervor.

Than again, perhaps that was why Simon would not be Master of London. Perhaps it was why she herself would not be, and why, after all, they were friends.

"Thank you," she said, and led the way home.


End file.
